Where to Start Reading Rick Atkinson

The first in his Revolution Trilogy The British Are Coming tells the story of the very start of the bloody war between the British Empire and the newly established American colonies. From vivid portraits of high-ranking generals and officials to riveting accounts of everyday men, women and children that were affected by the vitriol, this is history that reads like a novel.

The book that won him the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in History, An Army at Dawn is both an accessible history and a triumphant account of the liberation of Europe in World War II and the beginning of the fall of the Third Reich. The first in his Liberation Trilogy, Atkinson explains that the ultimate victory of the Allied powers never could have happened without the pivotal 1942 to 1943 war of North Africa.

Graduates of the United States Military Academy at West Point describe the school’s legacy in one way: a long gray line. Rick Atkinson’s book dives into the West Point Class of 1966, a class muddled by the dark stain of the Vietnam War. By homing in on the lives of three classmates, Atkinson describes life at West Point — and beyond, in the throes of a controversial war — in startling detail. 

A boots-on-the-ground account of a battlefield from a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. Atkinson journeyed to Baghdad with the 101^st Airborne Division with one goal in mind: capture the reality of American soldiers at war. With a firsthand account of the war in Iraq, Atkinson brings readers into the lives of everyday soldiers and into the crossfire of a devastating battle.